Ethereum Foundation establishes AI security researcher position

Ethereum Foundation recruits protocol security researcher

The Ethereum Foundation is recruiting a protocol security researcher to use artificial intelligence, fuzzytesting and manual auditing to find vulnerabilities in Ethereum's core infrastructure.

Summary

The researcher will examine Ethereum's execution layer, consensus layer, network layer, technical specifications, and client software. Responsibilities include AI-assisted vulnerability mining, hard fork review, fuzziness testing, auditing, and coordinated vulnerability disclosure. The global remote position was opened after the foundation undertook a major reorganization and cut 54 positions. The Ethereum security team recently confirmed that its artificial intelligence agents have identified real protocol vulnerabilities.

Ethereum security role covers the entire protocol

According to the recruitment announcement, the researcher will join the Ethereum Foundation's protocol security team to investigate vulnerabilities in multiple parts of the network. Work covers the execution level of processing transactions and smart contracts, as well as the consensus level of coordinating verifiers. In addition, it also includes Ethereum's point-to-point network, technical specifications and client programs that implement protocol rules.

Primary responsibilities include developing fuzziness testing tools, reviewing change plans for hard forks, manually auditing protocol updates, and coordinating responsible disclosure of identified vulnerabilities. Researchers will also use artificial intelligence systems to support automated vulnerability discovery.

This combination reflects the limitations of fully automated security testing. Artificial intelligence tools can generate a large number of possible discoveries, but researchers must reproduce each problem, assess its impact, and distinguish real vulnerabilities from false positives.

Candidates need to have extensive knowledge of the Ethereum protocol. The foundation said it prefers engineers who have been directly involved in protocol development or understand execution-level and consensus-level specifications. Related programming languages include Go, Rust, Java, C#, Nim, and Python. This remote position is open to candidates from Europe and other regions around the world.

Artificial intelligence tools have discovered Ethereum vulnerabilities

The recruitment follows the Ethereum Foundation's recent test of coordinating artificial intelligence agents, including protocol code, encryption software and other systems used on the network. In a July 9 technical article, the protocol security team said the agents had discovered real flaws.

"The agent did find the real vulnerability... It's not surprising that the agent discovered the vulnerability. Surprisingly, discovering the vulnerability itself takes very little effort, while distinguishing real vulnerabilities from seemingly real ones takes a lot of effort." One of the confirmed findings is the remotely triggered panic in libp2p's Gossipsub component, which is part of the point-to-point layer used by Ethereum consensus clients. Developers had fixed the issue before the vulnerability was disclosed as CVE-2026-34219.

However, the team said most of the work is to determine which findings generated by artificial intelligence are true. Researchers need reproducible evidence, proof-of-concept code, and manual review before viewing reports as vulnerabilities. The new role formalizes this workflow by combining automated discovery with manual verification and disclosure management.

Recruitment follows the reorganization of the Ethereum Foundation

The hiring came a month ago after the foundation dissolved its agreement support team in a reorganization that eliminated 54 positions, accounting for about 20% of its total workforce. The protocol support team was previously responsible for coordinating core developer meetings, tracking network upgrades, helping contributors process Ethereum improvement proposals, and running training programs for new protocol developers.

Several former foundation researchers have switched to independent organizations. Former employees Mo Jalil, Oskar Thorén and Aaryamann Challanic founded EthSystems, a for-profit company that develops confidential Ethereum infrastructure for regulated agencies. Joe Lubin, CEO of Bitime, SharpLink and Consensus Systems, supported the project. Former foundation researcher Francesco D'Amato also joined the independent protocol research group Ethlabs on July 16. The latest hiring shows that even as some development and coordination work moves away from the foundation, the organization is still adding professional staff in areas deemed critical.

Security remains at the core of Ethereum governance

The foundation also appointed security researcher Pascal Caversaccio to its board of directors on July 29 for an initial one-year voluntary term. His addition brought the board to four members and reinforced his stated concerns about security, privacy and censorship resistance.

For U.S. investors, protocol security is directly relevant because Ethereum supports spot exchange-traded funds, stablecoins, tokenized assets, and financial applications used by U.S. institutions. Vulnerability that affects consensus or client implementation can disrupt infrastructure far beyond the foundation's own. The hiring does not indicate that new vulnerabilities have been discovered, but rather expands the team responsible for reviewing future hard forks and discovering weaknesses before protocol changes are launched on the main network.